Hellish Chapters Saga, Chapter 2: Coming of High Danger
by The Hexagonal Donut
Summary: In the realm of Gensokyo, nothing happens without something crazy happening alongside it. In this case, we find our good friend Reimu, facing a foe from the (not yet written) Chapter 1 of the Hellish Chapters Saga, although this time it's something different- Instead of taking of the direct approach, he instead takes the sneaky approach, leading to one huge wild goose chase.
1. The Beginning- except not

**Greetings. Hex here. It is finally, FINALLY time to actually rewrite this. Fun Fact: I've had a file with only a disclaimer sitting on my computer for the better half of the past year. It's about damn time I rectified that.**

**Forewarning right now- swearing. Expect a nice amount of it. When it comes to writing, I typically leave no word unsworn. Especially when I deliberately use all of them. Every single one.**

**But regardless. Let's get started, shall we?**

* * *

It was a dark night in Gensokyo, not to be confused with a Dark Knight. Right now, we sit outside the Hakurei Shrine, in the eastern segment of the mystical realm. Inside, on a bed (a later spin-off will show the reason for its presence instead of a futon), lies the sleeping body of Reimu Hakurei. Buuut that's not really important. Let's move on to more important things. First off, let's look at a spot on the Hakurei Barrier not too far south from our present location.

As if on cue, a hole rapidly opens and closes in the barrier, sending a powerful ripple throughout Gensokyo, and waking up a handful of youkai, magic-wielding humans, and other things. Except, of course, that shrine maiden. Because she's lazy. But that's not important. Hovering in front of where that hole had appeared floats a man- dirty blonde hair, scar on the left cheek, piercing red eyes, black shirt, blue jeans (which really don't seem to fit, given the setting), and black boots. He simply… floats. No wings. No other obvious methods of flight. He just… floats. Best not to question it.

Regardless. This being is Seronin Yurami, the guy you saw in Unwelcome and Unholy Destruction. (except you didn't, since it hasn't been written as of the (re)writing of this chapter) He… floats, inexplicably, assessing his surroundings. Not much appears to have changed. Besides of course a couple new buildings in the Human Village, but that's only because last time he was here he torched a few. With cursed fire. Like a boss. But, of course, he had been apprehended by his (strangely similar looking) arch-nemesis, Henix Aurorus, and that blasted shrine maiden. And that vampire. What was her name? Flandre? Yeah, that was it. She was the reason he'd been forced out in the first place. If she hadn't shown up…

Enough. We're not here for internal monologues.

Moving on to do what he had actually come for, Seronin floats over to the Human Village, and sets out to start work on his plan.

* * *

_The following morning…_

Reimu wakes up to the same usual morning. Wake up, get dressed, make (and eat) breakfast, receive an unwanted visitor in the form of Marisa Kirisame… perfectly normal. Until around noon, when something happens.

At this point, our shrine maiden is sitting at the table, having tea with the kleptomaniacal "ordinary" magician, despite the fact that she obviously didn't want to. As if one cue, an explosion can be heard coming from the Human Village, with strange, purple-black smoke rising from the general direction.

Startled, Reimu walks out of the shrine, looking towards the smoke. "Explosions? Did a youkai try attacking the village again?"

Walking up next to her, Marisa ponders for a couple of seconds, then says "Unlikely. Last time they tried that, they got fried, ze. And that smoke doesn't look right…"

Confused, the pair fly over to the village, startled to see that the entire village had been reduced to smoldering ruins, with a sizable crater in the center. The pair immediately drop to the ground and start investigating. Not a soul was in sight.

Even further confused, Reimu examined the crater, picking apart the energies using a trick a friend had taught her, managing to identify fire and dark energy, but nothing she knew met the elements for that. "This is strange. No bodies. No one's here. It's almost as if whatever caused this just… warped them aw-"

Suddenly, Reimu is cut off by Marisa shouting, "Reimu! Come look at this, ze!"

Wandering over to Marisa, who was presently standing in the middle of the ruins of the school… in front of some burning remnants. Reimu gasped, as she almost instantly identified that it wasn't any ordinary fire. It was green. Bright green. "…cursed fire!... Seronin. How is he still alive?"

Marisa sighes, facepalming, as the answer was, truth be told, quite obvious. "Reimu, we're talking about a master of curses beyond even Hina. All honesty, it shouldn't be surprising that he's returned, ze. In fact, I'm surprised it took him this long. I was expecting him to be back within the week, not the year, ze. At least after that previous incident with him we have a way to beat him without Henix's help… in theory, daze."

Reimu frowns, completely confused. "That still doesn't explain anything. You saw what happened. Flandre obliterated him with _a single shot_. No one could survive that, not even our local immortal hothead. And that sure as hell doesn't explain where the villagers vanished off to. I honestly would've expected Seronin to kill them all, considering what he's done in the past. And he sure as hell doesn't clean up after himself, not to mention that cursed fire doesn't destroy bone, so there'd at least be a PART of a corpse here."

Marisa looks nervously in the direction of the SDM. "…regardless, we should really check on the SDM. Knowing Seronin, that's probably his next target, ze. Matter of fact, he's probably already there. We should go now, actually, ze. Don't want to miss the party." Not even giving Reimu a chance to protest, the magician grabs said shrine maiden, hops on her broom and immediately flies off towards said mansion, with a startled shrine maiden clinging to the broom.

* * *

_Meanwhile…_

From a mountain near the Hakurei Shrine, Seronin watches as the pair heads towards the Scarlet Devil Mansion. "That's right, go off, trying to save your precious realm. You don't have Henix to save you this time." Taking advantage of the distraction, Seronin summons an orb of condensed Cursed Fire, sending it into the shrine as a… surprise. He then immediately takes to the skies and rockets towards the SDM, intending to meet the shrine maiden and witch there, get them out of the way, then turn the Hakurei Shrine to rubble, followed by the rest of this wretched realm.

And he would do it. Like a boss. Because for some reason he had a knack for doing things like a boss. A knack that could not be explained, and he would not attempt to explain it. Because he didn't need to. He had no reason to.

…except maybe to increase the word count. But I'm not that kind of guy, so of course I won't be filling this with pointless words. Er, anyway.

* * *

_At the SDM…_

Reimu and Marisa land just inside the gates, ignoring the dozing gate guard, immediately walking up to the door and opening it. To their surprise, they are not greeted (almost) instantly by Sakuya, instead finding an empty foyer.

Walking over and poking the nearest vase experimentally, and not getting a response (such as a knife), Reimu looks around curiously. "No Sakuya? That's odd. Normally sh-" She was cut off by a loud, echoing giggle. A very FAMILIAR giggle. A flash of blonde hair briefly appears down the left hall, and from the right a fairy maid appears, looking around as though searching for something.

Marisa, walking over to the fairy, says, "Whatcha' looking for?", successfully startling the poor thing with a "EEP!".

Realizing who it was, the fairy maid calms down. "We're looking for the little sister. She somehow got out of her room and is now playing hide and seek with us… much as I hate to admit it, she is pretty good at it."

Reimu stares for a couple of seconds, then slams her head against the nearest convenient wall. "Just what we needed. Seronin's running around, where we don't know, the entirety of Gensokyo is in danger, and we have to go hunting for a crazy vampire who's playing hide and seek."

The only response is a stare from the fairy, who evidently doesn't have the memory capacity to remember who the hell this Seronin is.

Suddenly, a giggle echoes through the mansion again, this time seeming to come from everywhere and nowhere at once, followed by the familiar voice of everyone's favorite loli vampire. "Heehee! If you want to get me, you're going to have to come find me~. I sincerely wish you luck. No one has ever beat me at hide and seek."

Reimu immediately facepalms. "Henix, why the fuck did you have to teach her that trick?"

Marisa only chuckles. "Well, on the bright side, it'll make it harder for Seronin to find her, too, ze. Come on, let's go vampire hunting, daze."

And with that, Reimu and Marisa split up- one heading left, the other heading right, with their ultimate goal being finding Flandre before Seronin does.

_Touhou, Gensokyo, and all associated characters are owned by ZUN._

_Henix Aurorus and Seronin Yurami are owned by me, along with all their spellcards._

_Scenario (mostly) owned by me and my __mind, with inspiration from various sources._

* * *

**Ah, I have to be so evil with my cliffhangers. ^_^**

**And there's Chapter 1 rewritten. As a note, there's going to be a huge inconsistency between this chapter and chapter 2, at least until I rewrite it, so if you're reading this for the first time, or rereading, I recommend not progressing further unless you see at least 3 chapters on this, which'll be a good indication that I've rewritten chapter 2.**

**Either way, I'll start work on #2 tomorrow, and probably publish it by next Saturday.**

**Have a nice day. :)**


	2. Wild Flandre Chase

**HAYO, Hex here again, with the SECOND rewritten chapter of CoHD, which I actually started immediately after finishing Chapter 1… or at least, I started this bold part. The bold part that I have no idea what to call.**

**ANYWAY**

**Let's move on.**

* * *

_In the SDM…_

Reimu sighes in annoyance, leaning against the nearest wall briefly. Already ten minutes had passed and no one had any luck in finding Flandre. She had already found Remilia and filled her in on what was going on, but she was having no luck on anyone else.

Rounding a corner, she stopped at about the tenth four-way corridor she'd found since she'd started searching for that mishievous vampire, facepalming in frustration. "Why the hell is it that whenever I'm trying to do something productive, someone ALWAYS has to make it difficult?"

As if in response, a disembodied giggle from the sneaky little sister echoed through the halls, sounding both close by and far away at the same time.

Picking a random direction, Reimu turned down the left hall, briefly pausing in front of a simple table on the side of the corridor, complete with vase and tablecloth- strangely, one of only two in the entire mansion, the other being exactly opposite from it. The shrine maiden quickly dismissed it as an unlikely hiding spot- if Flandre was indeed as good at hide and seek as she said, she would be smart enough not to hide someplace obvious like that. (Little did she know, that was exactly the fact that the little vampire was hinging on.) She continues down the hall, rounding a bend, finding a set of stairs going up. Sighing in annoyance, Reimu heads up the stairs.

Back at that table, anyone paying enough attention would notice the figure of a certain blonde hiding beneath the tablecloth that the shrine maiden had completely ignored. Quietly poking her head out, Flandre looked down the hall curiously, as though having expected Reimu to have caught on, then simply lets out one of her trademark giggles, sending one of the fairy maids into a panic, as though afraid the adorable blonde had found her and was going to… *cough*, _play_ with her, which of course would constitute pain. Lots of it.

Moving on, on the opposite side of the mansion is Marisa, who is also having no luck. She had, however, found our missing chief maid, who apparently was not using her powers on account of "Flandre never forgiving her if she did," which in all honesty makes sense when you're talking about vampires. They're proud, y'know?... anyway.

The ordinary magician was presently walking down one of the many halls in the mansion, tosses her hakkero up and down for no other reason than because she could. And also because she needed something to distract her while she was "searching" (read: not actually searching) for Flandre.

Of course, that wasn't all she was doing. She was also pondering on the fact that it had been a full ten minutes and Seronin STILL hadn't shown himself. Was he waiting for something? Was he doing something else while they were preoccupied? Or was it neither? She had no idea, and she might never know.

At least for now.

After rounding 5 bends, encountering 3 4-ways, and running into a dead-end, Marisa sighes in annoyance. "Just where the hell is this little devil hiding? I guess she wasn't kidding when she said she had never been beaten at hide and seek, ze."

Just then, a familiar, monotone voice from just behind Marisa was heard. "You have no idea."

Startled, said magician immediately spins around to face Patchouli Knowledge, the mansion's resident magician, and also librarian.

"The girl may not be the smartest in terms of overall intelligence, but she sure as hell is smart when it comes to where she hides. Always somewhere someone wouldn't think to look, either because it'd be too obvious of a hiding spot, or because just because it'd be an extremely unlikely one, for instance hiding in the wall. She's done that before. The only reason we found her was because she got stuck and Sakuya had to get her out. Of course, finding her is about a thousand times harder when you can't go off of sound because she's spreading her voice across the entire mansion." The purple-haired magician paused to catch her breath, only to go into a brief coughing fit. Clearing her throat, she then continued. "So I don't presume you're here to play hide and seek. Come for more books?"

Marisa stared blankly at Patchy for a couple seconds, still processing all the bean sprout had just said. "Ah, yeah, well, we've got Seronin running around again and we needed to make sure Flan was alright, ze. Just our luck, we have to go on a Wild Flandre Chase. I've had no luck, and I doubt Reimu has had any either, ze. This little devil is pretty good."

Patchy simply sighes. "Well, I guess we could do with two extra pairs of eyes and ears. If that lunatic is truly back, then we're going to have to make sure he doesn't find Flandre. She may be powerful, but she is fragile,* and probably wouldn't stand a chance against him on her own."

*This is how I portray Flan, more often than not- a Glass Cannon. Powerful, but very fragile.

* * *

_2 hours later…_

Reimu at this point was banging her head against the nearest convenient wall. She had somehow managed to find her way all the way through the mansion (encountering Marisa twice, along with Patchy once and Remilia thrice), all the way back to the set of tables she had passed 15 paragraphs ago. Flandre's taunts in the form of giggles had ceased about half an hour ago, leading the shrine maiden to suspect that either she had fallen asleep, or she simply got bored.

Sighing in frustration, Reimu punched the wall, which of course did absolutely nothing. Leaning against said wall, the woman suddenly sensed movement underneath one of the tables. Slowly walking over, she gently lifted the tablecloth, to see a sleeping Flandre curled up underneath. "Clever little girl… hiding somewhere that would be so obvious no one would think to look there."

Gently scooping up the dozing vampire, making sure not to wake her, Reimu made her way back to the foyer, then down into the basement, heading past the library (which in this touhouverse is located in the basement), and then slipping through a large pair of solid metal doors, into Flandre's room. Setting the girl on the bed, then pulling the covers over her, the shrine maiden sighed, evidently satisfied that she had found her in time. Turning around, she walked towards the door.

"You know, I was originally thinking about joining your 'Wild Flandre Chase' as that witch put it. But you know something? It's a hell of a lot easier when you just have to stay in one spot and someone else does all the work for you."

Immediately spinning around, Reimu sees Seronin standing in the shadows right next to Flandre's bed. She hadn't even noticed he was there. Said master of curses walks over to Flandre, to which Reimu immediately summons her gohei and flings it at him, only for it to be dodged. She immediately pulls out her Fantasy Seal spellcard, prepared to unleash it on the bastard, only for said bastard to bring up an excellent point. "Are you sure you want to do that? After all, I'm close enough to her, you risk hurting her as well. Now, wouldn't _that_ be counterproductive." As if to prove his point, he summons a ball of raw energy and points it at Flandre, who is blissfully unaware of what's going on in the room.

At this point, they were at a stalemate. One of them had a spell that could very easily do a lot of damage, very quickly, while the other had an orb of energy that could potentially kill an unsuspecting youkai in one shot. On top of that, by using her spellcard Reimu risked causing collateral damage and hurting Flandre, while if Seronin released his ball of energy said shrine maiden would instantly unleash her spellcard. This stalemate was only broken when Sakuya suddenly appeared, filled the air with knives (facing Seronin, of course), snatched Flandre, and vanished.

Almost immediately, two things happened simultaneously- 1. Seronin redirected his orb and fired it towards Reimu, and 2. Said shrine maiden immediately activated her spell card, filling the room with large, multicolored orbs very easily dwarfing Seronin's in size. The resulting combination resulted in a powerful explosion, filling the room (and the hall) with smoke, and blasting the doors off their hinges.

_Touhou, Gensokyo, and associated characters and spellcards are owned by ZUN._

_Seronin Yurami is owned by me._

_Scenario is (mostly) owned by me._

* * *

**Henix Aurorus for most evil bastard 2013. I'm making you guys wait, not a week, not a month, but, yeah, until Unwelcome and Unholy Destruction is complete. Yep.**

**In case you're going "what?", I've officially decided that I'll be starting and finishing Unwelcome and Unholy Destruction FIRST, then I'll finish the rest of this, then proceed with Vampiric Destiny (the story after this one), and then with subsequent chapters.**

**So yeah. Feel free to hate me for giving you guys such an evil cliffhanger. ^_^**


End file.
